And more. Again, do please review. I didn't intend to mention the Easter Rising quite so much, only this time last year I was cramming myself full of that stuff for my exams, and I don't think I've shaken it off yet. Oh yes, and Thought and Memory (Hugin and Munin) are Odin's two ravens, who fly over the word and observe things for him.


The whole world wide, every day,

fly Hugin and Munin;

I worry lest Hugin should fall in flight,

yet more I fear for Munin.
- Grímnismál

And then came the battle goddess Morrigu and her sisters in the form of scald-crows and sat on his shoulder. "That pillar Is not wont to be under birds," said Erc son of Cairbre.
- The Death of Cuchulainn


No one had realised that anything was amiss because there had in fact been several instances of boys from the school, invariably bored or drunk or both, donning the scarecrows' rags and lurching about in them. There was very little to work with, in terms of pranks. Once Jenkins and Hutchinson had tied a bag over Tim's head and threatened to lash him to the scarecrow's post up on the hill. Tim was silent. He pictured himself, a silent sentinel. He imagined himself being tied to a cross like Christ. He made his body very limp and still. Before his eyes (though there were no eyeholes in the bag) he saw the seasons pass wearily.

"You've suffocated him, you bloody fool," he heard Hutchinson cry angrily. And then Jenkins' fingers fumbled hurriedly with the string.

When they lifted the bag, he grinned weakly at them. They said nothing, embarrassed that he had tricked them, and pleased that he was not suffocated, but with no intention of admitting it. Hutchinson glared at him.


"Oh, good boy! Good little man!"

He had stuck close by his nurse all along the crowded platform, and now they boarded the train. He was all clad in black, with a lace collar, as was she, but he did not care that his mother was dead. Or, he thought it very sad that the lady called Mother should have died, but he was too fond of his nurse to properly remember this.

He sat up beside her in the carriage and sang the train song. "We are going on the train. The man is driving the train. The train goes wooooo, woooooo…"

At this, some of the other passengers looked around, and Christine said, "Now, that's a very nice song, Timothy, but I think perhaps you had better be still and quiet. Where is your book?"

Everyone was impressed by the fact that so little a boy could read, but to his dismay, they only gave him books about brave boys who went to slay wicked tribesmen. He made a face. "I don't like it. I want to play a game."

She thought, her head on one side. Then she put out her hand, which she had made into a sort of a fist, but for the gap left between index and middle fingers. She said, in a singsong voice, "Put your finger in the corby's hole, the corby's not at home." He put his small finger into the gap between her two fingers. Suddenly she closed them, squeezing his finger, not so that it hurt but so that it shocked him. "Oh! The corby's at the back of the door, chewing a bone!"

"Christine?"

"Yes?"

"What's a corby?"

"A crow," she said.


"That maid," Hutchinson said to Baines, "you know, the darkie?"

"Oh yes."

"Nice arse. Of course, she's an animal – but still, it's a nice arse. You, are you doing my Latin?"

Tim nodded slowly.

"Then don't eavesdrop on my conversation."

Tim returned placidly to the work before him. He actually quite enjoyed it, Latin and Classics and Literature – what he hated was having to do the prefects' History work. It was so hard for him to construct an argument different to the one that he would use in his own work, for when he argued he always felt that his view was the most commonsensical and most easily supported. If it were not, it would not be the right view for him to take. And there was only so much jingoism that he could cram into the work of the other boys before it began to sound like a caricature of braying upperclassmen rather than the genuine article.

As it happened, he had not been eavesdropping until Hutchinson drew his attention to it, and now he could not stop listening.

"There's a woman over on the High Street that Jenkins knows who will do it," Baines said.

Hutchinson snorted. "But it's Jenkins – can you imagine the sort of creature that he would offer up for such a purpose?"

Baines shrugged. "It's just a hole, really. I don't know why you're so picky."

"Just a hole – honestly, you're such a freak, I don't know why you don't take a crack at Jenkins himself. Or Latimer. Latimer looks like a girl."

Baines made a vomiting noise and the two of them laughed hysterically. But Hutchinson's laughter was just a little too strained and desperate, because Hutchinson had wanted Tim to hear all this dreadfully masculine badinage, and wanted him to be excluded from it. Tim's sudden clarity with regard to Hutchinson's attitude toward him did not make him any fonder of the other boy; nor did it give him any hope that Hutchinson would not seriously break one of his limbs at some point. No one would care. Tim's father wouldn't be interested in such news, whereas Hutchinson's parents (doting types, a powdery mother and a stout father) would defend to the death their son's right to break the bones of anyone who crossed his path.

"Perhaps you'll let me in on the joke? It seems very amusing," came a crisp voice from the doorway.

It was Smith, the History master, known to the boys as Beanpole Smith for the simple reason that all the masters had to have nicknames, and he was very tall and very skinny.

The two boys straightened up. "Uhhh," said Baines.

"That's alright, Baines, don't exhaust yourself trying to devise a plausible lie," Smith said. His eyes fixed on Tim. "I only came by to have a word with Latimer." He beckoned. Tim got wearily to his feet and followed him out. As he went he heard a stifled giggle, and turned to see Hutchinson smirking at him while Baines made a ridiculous gesture involving the thumb and forefinger of one hand, in the shape of a ring, and the index finger of the other.

Tim followed Beanpole to his office, where he was offered a seat. He said nothing. He knew better than to ask if he might be in trouble. Smith sighed across the desk at him. "What am I to do?" he asked. "On the one hand, I cannot help but admire the sheer ingenuity that you have employed in writing essays for no less than five people."

"Five, sir?"

"Including yourself, naturally." Smith leaned back. "That's an adopted personality as much as any of the others," he mused, distantly. Then his sharp eyes focused once more on the boy. "Yet on the other hand," he said, "I can't say that it is strictly allowed."

Tim felt suddenly bold. There was something about Smith that made him feel immediately more himself – not that he was sympathetic, or friendly, exactly – but Tim felt that they had some sort of affinity. "If I may, sir?"

"You may, Latimer."

"Surely it doesn't matter all that much. I mean, it is that much more of a challenge for me, it means that the work is done, and you know that they wouldn't be learning or absorbing anything anyway."

Smith leaned across the table. Tim felt suddenly ashamed of having said such a thing. "Do you really think that makes it alright?" Smith asked. "Really, do you? Do you think that the physically strong possess the right to trample upon the physically weak? And do you think that your mental superiority affords you moral superiority over someone like Baines, with all the intellect of a particularly witless dog?"

Tim was embarrassed. He really had grown accustomed to thinking that way, suffering the physical injuries inflicted on him by the others, drawing solace from what he saw as his own superiority.

"It must sound hypocritical from my lips, given my position as teacher, but I would have thought that you might try, with that great brain of yours, to think of both yourself and of others as human. Do you understand? It is the most sublime and the most ridiculous and the most deeply abhorrent thing, to be human. It means making war upon each other. It means writing poetry. Which is why, first and foremost, I would recommend that you pay attention to what I teach you, because even when it seems repulsive or wasteful, it is always important. And also why I would insist that you allow the others to grasp these lessons on their own. Because they can. They are perfectly capable, so long as you do not take it upon yourself to carry the burden of this knowledge alone."

It was a very fine and very rousing speech, Tim thought as he was dismissed. He wanted to believe it, he wanted to follow its precepts. But could not quite

He moved quickly out of the doorway to allow Nurse Redfern to pass. Smith might seem rather high-minded, but he certainly spent a lot of time with the widow, and people had begun to talk.

When he returned to the Common Room, it was bustling. All the boys whose work he did were there, sitting on desks and flicking paper at each other and making great noisy eructations and generally behaving like the boors they were.

"What did he say?" Hutchinson demanded, alert as ever. Baines and Jenkins were kicking each other, but they (and the other boy who depended on Tim for his history essays, Phelps) fell silent, waiting for his answer.

"Oh, he just said that your work was improving and wanted to know if I'd helped you. I said no."

"You better have," Hutchinson said, standing to loom menacingly over Tim.

"And I did," Tim repeated calmly. He cast a glance at the other four, and then, to distract them, said something that he couldn't forgive himself for afterwards. "He didn't have time to say much, because Nurse Redfern came in and he hurried me out."

They all nodded sagely. "God, how pathetic," Jenkins snorted, "going after someone like old Beanpole. She must be desperate. I don't think he even knows you can use it for that."

Tim was blushing madly. "Yes," said Hutchinson, laughing. "She'll say," (here he adopted a high pitched voice) "'Oh John, you must tell me if you are a virgin, I shan't mind', and he'll say," (his voice dropped several octaves and became an irritating drone, with teacherly emphasis) "'Well, Joan, in nineteen-oh-three, John Smith did attempt, intercourse, with a prostitute (colloquially known as a goose, or, lady of the night), but, due to his inadequate equipment, the endeavour, failed.'"

And all Tim could do was laugh limply along with the others. The truth was, however bad he felt about it, he was still furious that he had such a rapport with Smith without it really being any use to him at all.


Eleanor was not the only one – Jane dreamed sometimes of fighting. She had once mentioned this to her husband, who had scoffed wordlessly and returned to his newspaper with a sour look on his face. He did not believe her. But the dream was always the same, and always had about the same clarity as a childhood memory – which is to say that it was not entirely clear, but that it seemed so much a part of her that she could not erase it. Indeed, she had first had the dream when she was six years old.

In the dream she was astride a horse, amongst the rest of the cavalry. Their armour and their arms blazed, but over everything there was a light patina of dust. The day was hot and beneath the lowered visor, sweat rolled in thick tears down her cheeks. Then a cry went up, and the infantry went forth, pennants streaming. Through the dust, she thought she saw the enemy's infantry do the same. Her own men, beneath the varicoloured banners of Christian France, were in the less advantageous position. She felt only disgust when she observed the enemy. The cavalry began to move. She spurred her horse on. The cannons boomed. The horse began to gallop, its hooves churning the dust so that now nothing was visible that was not near – she sensed, rather than saw, the riders on either side of her. Before her she saw nothing. The veins in her cheeks and forehead pulsed violently and she heard the roar of the infantry as they clashed with the enemy footsoldiers. She rode on, picking her way through the knots of men locked in the embrace of the battle, the arrows falling like rain, and the boom of the guns now louder than ever. And she knew that what she felt beneath the hooves of her beast, so soft and yielding, was the flesh of hapless soldiers.

Her heart blazed but was all enmeshed with little thorns.


Eleanor had been in love once before. His name was Paul, and he was a fool of much the same type as Tim – an over-serious, physically slight fellow with a puckered forehead and a pained smile. He had been handsome, she now supposed, but it was very hard to recall his face without recourse to photographs. They liked to speak to each other in French; they liked to speak of poetry and art, and also of liberty and universal suffrage and the common rights of man. He was really from an English family, had spent much of his childhood in England, and spoke with an accent that was entirely Eton. But he excelled himself at rhetoric. Once, when she was away at the seaside with her family, she had fallen asleep after reading a most inflammatory letter from him, and dreamed that Napoleon's fleet was landing in the bay.

This was how he had got in with certain people. She knew that the Socialists amongst the group, who said that there should be no revolution if it did not improve the lot of the ordinary man, were not fond of him. But the more intense young fellows, the poets and dreamers with nebulous dreams of green flags and the notion that perhaps, if one only wrote a thing in the right way, it might actually be thus, were very warm with him. It was after a meeting off Sackville Street that she saw him talking with Pearse himself, the two of them so animated that it really became quite repulsive to her. Up until that point, she had been all for it, mostly for Socialist reasons (she could not quite fool herself into being a Nationalist – it was not quite her place – for she belonged nowhere and to no one in particular, having been brought up in France and England). Then, suddenly, watching the two as they talked, and made vigorous masculine gestures, and their eyes sparkled, and their voices became indecently loud, she made a realisation.

Afterwards they went walking. "Such a great man," he had said, his eyes full of awe. "If anyone can free Mother Ireland, it is him."

She winced. "Have you read his poetry?"

"And what does that mean? His poetry expresses perfectly the nature of the times in which we live. Now, we will put down our pens, and take up our swords, and…"

"Because the only thing is," she said, as they paused to watch the rushing fountain, "it's really terrible poetry."

He was shocked. "Eleanor, I don't know what you mean by that. I mean, it is all a good deal more complex than the Shan van Vocht and any other Whiteboy anthems, if you're complaining about the level of technical skill. He can't equal Yeats, but he surpasses any of those crass little pieces of sentimental trash devised solely for farm labourers."

The thing about farm labourers, Eleanor reflected silently, was that they could actually do something useful. "Those Whiteboys," she said quietly, "are the people for whom you wish to fight."

He took her hand and looked at her imploringly. He thought it terribly romantic, she saw now. He kissed her hand gently, and said, ever so softly, "Naked I saw thee, O beauty of beauty, and I blinded my eyes for fear I should fail."

She smiled wanly at him, and was disgusted. She thought angrily that if he had ever seen her naked, he certainly wouldn't be blinding himself for any reason.

"You have to understand," he said, as though being very patient, "that they all go to fight for local grievances, and when someone hands them a gun they use it to shoot at ravens. But we, the poets, are part of a much older tradition." He saw no irony in that. He thought that one could be whichever nationality one chose. "We go to fight for our Mother, and we will not waste a single bullet."

Oh, horrible, horrible, that he would spurn her, with her live body that he had never really properly laid a finger on, for some imagined and abstracted grandmother! She saw now really that a good poet would not so easily surrender the fight between himself and expression; that he would not cave and begin painting slogans; that he would not spurn a live woman for an imagined one. She realised also that perhaps she'd hoped all this swapping of missives and passionate argument about Schiller might lead them into bed rather than through the doors of the Post Office. She wanted to mock him. She wanted to remind him of all the young men who had followed fictitious Werther to a very real death for the sake of fashion, and of Goethe's disdain for them, and of his remark in his old age: "Romanticism is disease, Classicism is health." She might have said, "Romanticism is impotence." But she did really love him, and so she only embraced him and tolerated him.

Even then, she had mostly turned away from him. She turned away from the Rising, using her femininity as an excuse. She watched from the sidelines. She thought on the paradox of an identity that depends upon failure as the ultimate symbol of valour – failure as a golden crown, or laurel wreath.


Hutchinson had never gone sick, or mad, as some had. He was, Tim knew, exactly what he had seemed to be at school. He was staunch and he was brave and he had a certain daring (and perhaps sadistic) streak. Because of this, he often saw far worse sights than Tim and said nothing of it. Only once did Tim witness him do anything untoward.

At Arles, they had come across the body of a German soldier, still quite intact, eerily so. He was only a boy, perhaps as young as fourteen, and though his face was pale and his pupils dilated in their lifeless irises, he bore no other signifiers, no other marks that death had put upon him. He was propped up inside a shell hole. On his shoulder was perched a huge and very lively black crow. It tore hungrily at his flesh with its sharp metallic beak, and doubtless could not believe its luck. They stood for a moment, and watched its prancing over the boy, who seemed only to be sleeping. Then Hutchinson shot it.

When they overturned the boy, they found his back a seething, bloody mess of obliterated flesh and shattered bone.

Tim lay in bed, beside Baines, his 'ghost'. He was shirtless and, in the moonlight, something of an Obscure Object (possibly an object of desire, and certainly one of mystery). Tim couldn't very well wake him and tell him to clothe himself more thoroughly. He couldn't very well refuse to sleep alongside him when he saw now that the boy was patently terrified that he might well be a ghost, because he had heard Eleanor (from his hiding place inside the wardrobe) say that his uniform smelled like a corpse. Tim was struck again by the mysterious wholeness of him, and so remembering the dead German boy followed logically, if one obeyed the dream-logic. The Doctor had put Son of Mine to stand guard over England's fields. Tim watched the crows scatter before him. And then, since they were after all carrion birds, they swept up into the sky in great black spirals, and descended upon the fields of France – that marvellous feast. They danced merrily upon the bodies of the defiled dead.

Tim had not feared the rats half so much. The rats wanted only tinned food.